The official poverty rate rose in 2008 to 13.2 percent, from 12.5 percent in 2007.

Census Bureau

Income at the 10th percentile fell by $500, while income at the 90th percentile ticked downward by $3,000. Comparing the change in income at the 90th and 10th percentiles over the past forty years suggests that inequality is increasing. Between 1967 and 2008, the income at the 90th percentile increased 63.1 percent, while income at the 10th percentile increased 32.4 percent.

Census Bureau

The percent of people who were uninsured remained essentially the same, at 15.4 percent. A smaller share of children were without health insurance, 9.9 percent — perhaps because more became eligible to receive government insurance.

Source: Census Bureau

Nearly one in five children is living below the poverty threshold.

Source: Census Bureau

Continuing the downward trend of the last eight years, a smaller percentage of people received private or employer-based health insurance last year compared to 2007. Subscription rates to government health insurance coverage grew. Census officials said they were unsure about the extent to which the increase in government insurance recipients was a result of more Americans qualifying for Medicaid and related programs for the poor. An alternate explanation would be that more Americans joined Medicare’s rolls.

Source: Census Bureau

Among people ages 18 to 64, 20.3 percent were uninsured in 2008, up from 19.6 percent in 2007.

To better understand the trends in median household income, the changes in the number of wage-earners per household should also be given. I fear that much, of not all, the (surprisingly small) increase in middle-income (50th-percentile) income since 1967 may be due to the increase in households with two (or more) workers. If that is in fact true, the future does not look bright for the vast majority of households unless income inequality can be moderated.

You should break down the number of workers in a household; that would tell a truer story. There’s a big difference in net income between a household where Dad makes 50k or a household that grosses 50k with both parents working. The standard of living is going down for most Americans; I don’t care how many plasma TVs they have. Consumer goods are just a small measure of living standards. The American standard of living is lagging behind primarily because of the high cost of education and health care. Actually the cheaper prices of fancy TVs are helping to keep us down. Too many people are curled up in the fetal position sucking their thumbs in front of infantile so-called entertainment, all the more to be sucked in by the liars and morons who benefit by keeping Americans poor and stupid.

There’s an obvious solution to this. One woman should take on more husbands or one man should take on more wives. Therefore the household income would increase again as more people go out to work in the household. You guys just aren’t think about this properly!

Dunn’s right. The middle 60% of households have hung on as well as they have these past 35 years only because more and more of them include two working partners — which of course changes the balance of power within the household against the husband. The reality is that the share of income going to wages/benefits has steadily declined since 1973, while the share going to capital in interest, dividends, rents, proprietorship profits and capital gains has increased. We are moving back towards 1929. The Tea Party folks can feel it, and they know that neither the corporate Republicans nor the mandarin Democrats are going to do much about it. Unfortunately, their anger is all to easily directed against the wrong people.

One other point worth noting about the median household income (mentioned by several people above) is that the median individual income is under $32,200. SO, have the individuals in the US earn more than this amount and half earn less. This puts the number of earners and household income into perspective.

The median household income (adjusted for inflation) has been essentially flat for the past 40 years and the only group to see long-term growth in both income and wealth has been the top 1% and 5%. The top decile looks good too, as long as you realize how much the increases on the top percentile swamp the top quintile numbers.

Real income doubled from the period of 1947 to 1972 though the rate of grwoth slowed dramatically after 1968. Beyond that, it just went flat. Some of that is certainly due to the number of household members working and the dynamics of household changes. But to have these characteristics flatten in all but the highest income bracket suggests something far more fundamental.

Finally, as to taxes. If you took a “standard household” of two adults and two children that was earning at the median income level and looked at tax liability. Using only the standard deduction and person exemption levels for the various years you would find somethning very interesting,

In 1980, the median household would have earned $17,732 and would have had a tax liability of $1,787 (or roughly 10.1% of gross income). For 2008, that same median household arrangement would have had a tax liability of $3,011 on the median income of $50,303, or about 6.0% of the income. But that tax rate is about 59.4% of the effective tax rate in 1980, and many in this lower half of the income distribution have no income tax liability at all because they don’t earn enough to even pass taxation thresholds.

Ironically, each year when the US Census reports their data, they look at the distribution of income (through the Gini index) and see no statistically significant difference in the income distribution, Yet it is clear over the longer term than just a year-to-year comparison or over a three year period, that income distribution has become much more unequal.

Like a wobbly bicycle rider, there is no certainty whether we will remain upright or will crash.

Besides the 2 parent working households keeping the median household income from falling off a cliff, the ability of the consumer to borrow (credit cards, home equity loans, student loans, auto loans) helped the American consumer feed the greed at the top and purchase more products manufactured by people in distant nations earning less than a dollar a day. Once the credit has been removed from the equation, and all the underwater homes have been repossessed by the banks, what will be left to sustain the economic toy for the rich? Nothing. They are going to get what’s coming to them, while rest of the bottom feeders will have to eat themselves to stay alive.

The Affordable Care Act imposes economic burdens that are the equivalent of taxes, an economist writes. Read more…

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Economics doesn't have to be complicated. It is the study of our lives — our jobs, our homes, our families and the little decisions we face every day. Here at Economix, journalists and economists analyze the news and use economics as a framework for thinking about the world. We welcome feedback, at economix@nytimes.com.